Joe Biden thinks Hillary doesn't know what the hell she's talking about on Iraq ... Edwards is a know-nothing ... and Barack Obama is one cleeeeeean Black man. Don't believe me? Here are the quotes from the New York Observer interview. First, on Hillary:
“Everyone in the world knows her,” he said. “Her husband has used every single legitimate tool in his behalf to lock people in, shut people down. Legitimate. And she can’t break out of 30 percent for a choice for Democrats? Where do you want to be? Do you want to be in a place where 100 percent of the Democrats know you? They’ve looked at you for the last three years. And four out of 10 is the max you can get?”
On John Edwards:
Mr. Biden seemed to reserve a special scorn for Mr. Edwards, who suffered from a perceived lack of depth in foreign policy in the Presidential election of 2004.
“I don’t think John Edwards knows what the heck he is talking about,” Mr. Biden said, when asked about Mr. Edwards’ advocacy of the immediate withdrawal of about 40,000 American troops from Iraq.
“John Edwards wants you and all the Democrats to think, ‘I want us out of there,’ but when you come back and you say, ‘O.K., John’”—here, the word “John” became an accusatory, mocking refrain—“‘what about the chaos that will ensue? Do we have any interest, John, left in the region?’ Well, John will have to answer yes or no. If he says yes, what are they? What are those interests, John? How do you protect those interests, John, if you are completely withdrawn? Are you withdrawn from the region, John? Are you withdrawn from Iraq, John? In what period? So all this stuff is like so much Fluffernutter out there. So for me, what I think you have to do is have a strategic notion. And they may have it—they are just smart enough not to enunciate it.”
And on Barack:
... “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
But—and the “but” was clearly inevitable—he doubts whether American voters are going to elect “a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate,” and added: “I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.”
(After the interview with Mr. Biden and shortly before press time, Mr. Obama proposed legislation that would require all American combat brigades to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of March 2008.)
Al Sharpton says: hey, I take a bath every day! And Rev. Jesse Jackson says, 'you have wounded me, sir!'
Mr. Jackson described Mr. Biden’s remarks to the Observer, which also included critical statements about the Iraq positions of two of his Democratic opponents — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina — as “blabbering bluster.”
A wounded note to his voice, Mr. Jackson pointed out that he had run against Mr. Biden for the 1988 Democratic nomination, and had lasted far longer and drawn more votes than did Mr. Biden. Mr. Biden was forced out in September 1987.
“I am not sure what he means — ask him to explain what he meant,” Mr. Jackson said. “I don’t know whether it was an attempt to diminish what I had done in ’88, or to say Barack is all style and no substance.”
Mr. Sharpton said that when Mr. Biden called him to apologize, Mr. Sharpton started off the conversation reassuring Mr. Biden about his hygienic practices. “I told him I take a bath every day,” Mr. Sharpton said.
No stranger to electoral intrigue, Mr. Sharpton was quick to offer a political motive: That Mr. Biden was drawing distinctions between Mr. Obama and African-American leaders like Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson, to “discredit Mr. Obama with his base.”
Well Joe, you've had your Youtube moment. Now go to Macaca.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Presdident Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- despite his occasional tendency toward overreaching -- didn't order the U.S. military to dispatch soldiers and sailors to attack Tokyo. He went to Congress, and asked for a declaration of war. Those were the good old days, when Congress mattered and the president knew it.
Somebody has to tell George W. Bush that he is not a monarch. He does not have the unilateral power to spy on Americans, database our private info, or declare war. Specifically, he does not now, nor has he ever asked Congress for, the authority to wage war on Iran.
To that end, Senators Pat Leahy of Vermont and Arlen Specter of PA are demanding that Bush's justice department explain to Congress just what authority he thinks Congress has when it comes to waging war on Iran.
Let's see how that works out. Meanwhile, Barack Obama releases his version of a plan to extricate the U.S. from Iraq.
Ari Fleischer testifies at the Scooter Libby trial -- contradicting Dick's right hand man on the subject of just when Scooter found out about Valerie Plame's identity (he testified that Scooter told him three days before Scooter's fabled convo with Tim Russert -- you know, the one where he heard about Plame for the "first time" -- during the one and only lunch Libby ever invited Ari to...) BTW, the Ari-Libby convo was "hush hush, on the QT..." On the stand today: Judy Miller.
The US must draw up plans to deal with an all-out Iraqi civil war that would kill hundreds of thousands, create millions of refugees, and could spill over into a regional catastrophe, disrupting oil supplies and setting up a direct confrontation between Washington and Iran.
This is the central recommendation of a study by the Brookings Institution here, based on the assumption that President Bush's last-ditch troop increase fails to stabilise the country - but also on the reality that Washington cannot simply walk away from the growing disaster unleashed by the 2003 invasion.
Even the US staying to try to contain the fighting, said Kenneth Pollack, one of the report's authors, "would consign Iraqis to a terrible fate. Even if it works, we will have failed to provide the Iraqis with the better future we promised." But it was the "least bad option" open to the US to protect its national interests in the event of full-scale civil war.
US troops, says the study, should withdraw from Iraqi cities. This was "the only rational course of action, horrific though it will be", as America refocused its efforts from preventing civil war to containing its effects.
The unremittingly bleak document, drawing on the experience of civil wars in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Congo and Afghanistan, also offers a remarkably stark assessment of Iraq's "spill-over" potential across the Persian Gulf region.
It warns of radicalisation and possible secession movements in adjacent countries, an upsurge in terrorism, and of intervention by Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Ending an all-out civil war, the report says, would require a force of 450,000 - three times the present US deployment even after the 21,500 "surge" ordered by President Bush this month. ...
Meanwhile, who's to blame for Iran's dramatic rise in power and influence in the Mideast? George W. Bush, start talking to the man in the mirror... And Europe, which blames the U.S. for Iran's rise, is balking at Bush administration attempts to force Western countries to cut ties to Tehran.
Two Black fraternity members have been sentenced to two years in prison for "felony hazing" in Florida. Meanwhile, four white frat guys get charged with a misdemeanor, for the same thing. What's wrong with this picture? We talked to the lawyer in the Black frat hazing case this morning, and he's filing motions calling on the judge to step down, saying she was biased toward the prosecution from the get-go. Circuit court judge Kathleen Decker said the two Black men -- one a pharmacy major and the other an engineering major -- needed to be made an example of. Hm... Doesn't sound biased to me.
Meanwhile, a Florida farm boss gets 30 years for running a virtual slave camp -- recruiting homeless Black men from Miami and then putting them to work in his cesspool of a camp, where money for booze, cigarettes and even crack cocaine -- which was sometimes stuffed in their meager paychecks -- was deducted from the workers' pay, sometimes leaving them with just 30 cents on the dollar. The guy's wife and son were also convicted in the case. Read the unbelievable story and the Herald's investigative work on the subject here.
Staying on the race topic, a new study says that the lighter you are, the more money you make, and that goes not just for African-Americans, but also for immigrants from ... well ... anywhere.
Laura has named President Bush's new executive pastry chef, and he has an impressive resume. William 'Bill' Yosses...
... is trained in classical French cooking, was the White House Holiday Pastry Chef for the 2006 holiday season, helped open Paul Newman's Dressing Room in Westport, Conn., and ran the pastry department at the Tavern on the Green Restaurant in New York City.
He's also active in Spoons Across America, "a not-for-profit organization dedicated to educating children, teachers, and families about the benefits of healthy eating.
Yosses is an author too, though the White House didn't list that among his credits. He co-wrote Desserts for Dummies.
... Well, at least he's found exactly the right person to bake for... other door, Bushie ... other door ... out you go...
Hillary Clinton's inexorable march toward the White House continues this week, fresh off a weekend when she humanized herself with an off-tune rendition of the national anthem, rhetorically kicked Dubya's ass by declaring that it would be the height of irresponsiblity for him to leave office with U.S. troops still stuck in Iraq, essentially passing his disaster on to the next president -- and that, as the presumptive next president -- she was "offended" by the mere possibility ... and when new polls showed her watering the garden with her Democratic and Republican opponnents. First, the poll: it's from Newsweek, and it shows Bush plummeting to still further depths following his sorry State of the Union speech, and Hillary rising, fast:
Jan. 27, 2007 - President George W. Bush concluded his annual State of the Union address this week with the words “the State of our Union is strong … our cause in the world is right … and tonight that cause goes on.” Maybe so, but the state of the Bush administration is at its worst yet, according to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll. The president’s approval ratings are at their lowest point in the poll’s history—30 percent—and more than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over, a sentiment that is almost unanimous among Democrats (86 percent), and is shared by a clear majority (59 percent) of independents and even one in five (21 percent) Republicans. Half (49 percent) of all registered voters would rather see a Democrat elected president in 2008, compared to just 28 percent who’d prefer the GOP to remain in the White House. ...
Oh, God, that's depressing! Please, let's get back to Hillary:
Sen. Hillary Clinton has pumped up her lead over GOP Sen. John McCain since she formally announced she's running for President, a new poll shows. Clinton would defeat McCain - who has taken heat for defending President Bush's stance on the Iraq war - 50% to 44%, according to a Newsweek poll released yesterday.
A Newsweek survey conducted right before Clinton's Jan. 20 announcement had her leading McCain 48% to 47%.
Newsweek found freshman Illinois Sen. Barack Obama would also beat McCain, 48% to 42%, and former veep nominee John Edwards would edge McCain by four points - within the survey's margin of error.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani would also lose to Clinton in a White House faceoff, although she bested the Republican by a slim 49% to 46%.
Giuliani lost to Obama by three points, but defeated Edwards in a one-point dead heat.
All three Democrats would crush Massachusetts Republican Mitt Romney, the survey found.
Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics cautioned that the election is a long way off.
"All it means is that right now, the Republicans are in terrible shape," Sabato said.
"Right now, just about any Democrat could beat just about any Republican," he said. "This is more a measure of the fact that right now, Democrats are riding high. Too bad for them the election isn't next month."
Given a choice between Clinton and Edwards, Dems chose Clinton 62% to 29% as their party's standard bearer.
In a matchup with Obama, Clinton won 55% to 35%.
Ah ... that's better. Poll geeks can click here for the particulars.
I don't think this is curtains for Barack by any stretch -- he only has room to grow, and the real odd man out right now is our man Edwards, who only has Iowa to hang on to at the moment, and Hil is quickly moving in there, too. And speaking of same, Hillary was in Iowa over the weekend, singing her little Hillary heart out ... and badly ... to absolutely adorable effect:
First, a CBS News poll finds Democrats favor Hillary by a wide margin over Barack. No surprise there, since Mama is the Big Dog in the race. And as for Black respondents ... well ... they prefer Hillary too, by 51 percent to just 28 percent. Clearly, Obama has some work to do among African-Americans, who seem to be suspicious of his ... how to say ... lack of overt Blackcentrity...
Senator Chuck Hagel went OFF yesterday during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on a non-binding resolution on Bush's Iraq escalation strategy. Hagel was the only Republican on the panel to vote the resolution through to the full Senate, and he's not feeling his colleague's duplicity on the issue. Of the nine Republicans, I count six, including Hagel, who have expressed serious doubts about the Bush plan, and yet none would go on the record. Shameful. Watch Hagel's plow-down of his weak-kneed colleagues for yourself:
Do you wish you’d voted differently in October of 2002, when Congress had a chance to authorize or not authorize the invasion? Have you read that resolution?
I have. It’s not quite the way it’s been framed by a lot of people, as a resolution to go to war. That’s not quite what the resolution said.
It said, “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.” In the event that all other options failed. So it’s not as simple as “I voted for the war.” That wasn’t the resolution.
But there was a decision whether to grant the president that authority or not. Exactly right. And if you recall, the White House had announced that they didn’t need that authority from Congress.
Which they seem to say about a lot of things. That’s right. Mr. [Alberto] Gonzales was the president’s counsel at that time, and he wrote a memo to the president saying, “You have all the powers that you need.” So I called Andy Card, who was then the chief of staff, and said, “Andy, I don’t think you have a shred of ground to stand on, but more to the point, why would a president seriously consider taking a nation to war without Congress being with him?” So a few of us—Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I—were invited into discussions with the White House.
It’s incredible that you had to ask for that. It is incredible. That’s what I said to Andy Card. Said it to Powell, said it to Rice. Might have even said it to the president. And finally, begrudgingly, they sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.
It wasn’t specific to Iraq? Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.
They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East? Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.
But that should also have triggered alarm bells about what they really wanted to do. Well, it did. I’m not defending our votes; I’m just giving a little history of how this happened. You have to remember the context of when that resolution was passed. This was about a year after September 11. The country was still truly off balance. So the president comes out talking about “weapons of mass destruction” that this “madman dictator” Saddam Hussein has, and “our intelligence shows he’s got it,” and “he’s capable of weaponizing,” and so on.
And producing a National Intelligence Estimate that turned out to be doctored. Oh yeah. All this stuff was doctored. Absolutely. But that’s what we were presented with. And I’m not dismissing our responsibility to look into the thing, because there were senators who said, “I don’t believe them.” But I was told by the president—we all were—that he would exhaust every diplomatic effort.
You were told that personally? I remember specifically bringing it up with the president. I said, “This has to be like your father did it in 1991. We had every Middle East nation except one with us in 1991. The United Nations was with us.”
Did he give you that assurance, that he would do the same thing as his father? Yep. He said, “That’s what we’re going to do.” But the more I look back on this, the more I think that the administration knew there was some real hard question whether he really had any WMD. In January of 2003, if you recall, the inspectors at the IAEA, who knew more about what Saddam had than anybody, said, “Give us two more months before you go to war, because we don’t think there’s anything in there.” They were the only ones in Iraq. We hadn’t been in there. We didn’t know what the hell was in there. And the president wouldn’t do it! So to answer your question—Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.
I've said this before, but if this man does run for president, and if by some miracle he were to make it to the general, I would have serious thoughts about voting for a Republican for the first time ever.
Update: Newsweek has even more Hagel to love... complete with this quote from Dick Vader ... er... Cheney:
"I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment: THOU SHALT NOT SPEAK ILL OF A FELLOW REPUBLICAN. But it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved."
We had The Hotline's Mike Memoli on the Big radio show this morning, talking about the latest news in the Obama v. Faux News. Apparently, Obama ain't going for the okey doke.
Here's the latest news from the mercenary war in Iraq: four Blackwater contractors were killed execution-style this week by Sunni insurgents.
Throwback cases on both sides of the racial divide: eight Black men faces charges in the shooting death of a police officer and other assorted crimes while they were members of the Black Liberation Army in the early 1970s ... and a Mississippi man thought to have been dead, is alive and well and under indictment for the murder of two Black teens in 1964.
Is Rudy Giuliani the Howard Dean of the 2008 presidential campaign ... or the Ross Perot? Meaning, will he burn bright in the GOP primary, only to flame out when voters get a load of his wife-swapping, negro-hating, pro-abortion, gay friendly, gun-not-so-friendly makeup? Or ... will he burn bright in the early going, only to drop out like a punk-ass beeyatch.
To the headlines!
From RawStory, proof that Rudy don't know diddly about foreign policy, specifically in Iraq. Giuliani stumbled on the softest of all possible interviews, outside of a tete a tete with the Bushbots at Fox "News" Channel: the velvet gloves of the Today Show. He fumbled a question on his support for Bush's "troop augmentation" (it will make Iraq perky!!!) and called Anbar province "Anwar" (maybe he's got crude oil on the brain ... mmmmmm... crude oillll.......) And then he added this:
GIULIANI: ... We can measure that. We can measure -- I think, it's nine sectors in Baghdad -- how much violence is there now? How much violence is there the week after, the next month, the month after. You know, I'm kind of familiar with that using the Comstat program in New York.
HOST: I was going to say to you, sir, what does a mayor know about what's going on in Iraq? On foreign policy?
GUILLIANI: I've spent a great deal of time talking to people about it. I've been on 91 foreign troops in the last five years. I've been in 35 different countries. Right before the speech on Iraq, I met with, maybe, ten or twelve people with differing viewpoints. People who wanted to pullout, generals who helped craft the strategy. So, you know, you try to learn as much as you can about these issues.
Yes... you do try, don't you...
How many months shall we guess before we're faced with video of the Giuliani scream...?
Meanwhile, the folks at Political have a piece up about the doubts being expressed by Giuliani friends about whether Uncle Rudy possesses the necessary seriousness to run for president:
Failed 2000 N.Y. Campaign Casts Shadow Over Giuliani's 2008 Ambition
By: Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith January 24, 2007 02:27 PM EST
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is finally scrambling to beat back a crippling perception that his bid for president isn't quite serious. But even as he begins to hire aides and consultants, many of his New York supporters and critics, as well as neutral observers, see a repeat of his half-hearted, unfinished 2000 campaign for Senate.
"At this moment in history I do not believe he's running for president; I just don't believe it," said Mike Long, chairman of the Conservative Party of New York State. "I don't know of anyone who's gotten a call saying, 'I'm running, I need you to get behind me,' same as happened before."
"I'm having a real hard time believing the guy is taking it seriously," said a former Guiliani aide, who said that he would love to see him become president. "In 2000 there was this feeling that he didn't have to play by all the rules that little people have to play by, and I see that even more strongly now."
The question for this year's Republican primary is whether voters can expect the Giuliani of his first winning campaign in 1993 -- a studious, disciplined, hard-working candidate -- or the indecisive, disorganized, reluctant candidate of 2000, carried by spectacular public polling and national Republican hopes toward a confrontation with Hillary Rodham Clinton until he flamed out in May.
"Here's a dossier of confidential Giuliani campaign documents of which the campaign lost possession in early November. The documents appear to have been prepared by Giuliani's chief fundraiser, Anne Dickerson. Some personal information, largely cellular phone numbers, was redacted. To download the document, right click here and select Save Target As... See Ben Smith's blog for a guide to the document."
To many in New York, it's starting to look like 2000 all over again with Giuliani drawing the biggest headlines of late when an aide lost possession of a binder containing detailed fund-raising plans and worries that his personal and business life could scuttle his campaign; that 140-page dossier, first published in the New York Daily News, is available online today at Politico.com.
His aides declined to make him available for comment.
The Giuliani fame clock appears to be in full tick.
What ever happened to Bush's SOTU promise to get us to the Red Planet? It's been two long years, and I'm seriously disturbed that Mars seems to have dropped completely from his rhetoric...!
Anyway, without Mars, and lo, without "switchgrass," this year's State of the Union speech left me rather bored. (Martians shouldn't feel too badly. New Orleans didn't make the speech, either...)
Bush was conciliatory -- a new Bush, as it were. He gave a nice tribute to Mother, who sat behind him looking lovely -- but blinking at such a phenomenal rate that the contrast between her blinking, and Dick "The Robot" Cheney's tendency to whet his eyeballs only once every 15 minutes -- was actually disturbing. The prez also sent well wishes to the two incapacitated members of Congress -- something the vice president has probably consulted his voodoo dolls about nightly...
Bush offered a laundry list of Democratic sounding proposals -- 20 percent reduction in our dependence on foreign oil, a balanced federal budget, earmark reform, "comprehensive immigration reform" ... and without amnesty! (how to do, how to do???) ... and a massive federal tax subsidy to insurance companies paid for by taxpayers so that a handful of the 47 million uninsured can use a tax credit to buy crap insurance from Bush's donors ... oops, that was a Republican sounding proposal ...
Oh, and Bush said we're all in it together in Iraq. Goodie. Oh, and about that stuff about Iran plotting to arm our enemies in Iraq (which did make the speech,) Bushie may want to back order a copy of the L.A. Times.
He did introduce Dikembe Mutombo, who is no longer a citizen of the DRC, since he's now an American citizen. And he pointed out Wesley Autry, the guy who saved that other guy from getting run over by a train in New York City. Heart warming stuff, though tough to get in its entirety since I was literally falling asleep by then.
Sorry to sound so unserious, but a less than serious speech doesn't seem to merit much real blogthought. Not when I have to get up at 3 a.m. to troll through this stem winder on the morning show. So I'll leave you to the tender mercies of the Associated Press... surely they'll make sense of it. Oh, and one more thing: if this was the speech intended to get most Americans to tune back in to Mr. Bush and give him a fresh look, I wouldn't count on it moving the meter.
Jim Webb is doing his thing now. Gotta go. Here's the AP on Bush's Iraq challenge ... apparently even Norm Coleman isn't buying... (BTW as I predicted this morning, Webb got full TV coverage -- 8 broadcast and cable nets carried his response to Bush's speech. In case you didn't stay up for it, here's the speech. It's good stuff.
This morning on the radio show, James T and I discussed our theories about why with all of the Bush administration being eaten alive over missteps in Iraq, Condi Rice remains strangely unscathed. We speculated that it could be because she's seen as weak, and a mere reflection of her boss ... or because she has somehow insulated herself by staying out of the media's way ... ? My theory was that the administration was shielding Ms. Rice in order to preserve her political viability and popularity, just in case a very senior member of the administration was unable to fulfill his duties through the end of George W. Bush's term as president.
Lawyers Paint Libby as Sacrificial Lamb By Matt Apuzzo The Associated Press
Top White House officials tried to blame vice presidential aide "Scooter" Libby for the 2003 leak of a CIA operative's identity to protect President Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove, Libby's defense attorney said Tuesday as his perjury trial began.
I. Lewis Libby is accused of lying to FBI agents, who began investigating after syndicated columnist Robert Novak revealed that a chief Bush administration critic, Joseph Wilson, was married to CIA operative Valerie Plame.
When the leak investigation was launched, White House officials cleared Rove of wrongdoing but stopped short of doing so for Libby. Libby, who had been asked to counter Wilson's criticisms, felt betrayed and sought out his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, Wells said.
"They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," attorney Theodore Wells said, recalling Libby's end of the conversation. "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."
Rove was one of two sources for Novak's story. The other was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Nobody, including Rove and Armitage, has been charged with the leak. Libby is accused of lying to investigators and obstructing the probe into the leak.
Cheney's notes from that meeting underscore Libby's concern, Wells said.
"Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder," the note said, according to Wells.
The description of the White House infighting was a rare glimpse into the secretive workings of Bush's inner circle. It also underscores how hectic and stressful the White House had become when the probe was launched.
By pointing the finger at Rove, whom he referred to as "the lifeblood of the Republican party," Wells sought to cast Libby as a scapegoat.
"He is an innocent man and he has been wrongly and unjustly and unfairly accused," Wells said.
Wait, wait, there's more ... take it away, David Corn:
And as the two legal teams began their courtroom battle, new information was disclosed about the leak affair, including the revelation that Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary at the time of the leak, had identified Valerie Wilson as a CIA officer to NBC News reporter David Gregory a week before the leak appeared in Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 column, and that Fleischer, during the subsequent criminal investigation, took the Fifth Amendment and demanded (and received) immunity before testifying to Fitzgerald's' grand jury. Fleischer told the grand jury that he had learned about Valerie Wilson's CIA affiliation first from Libby and then from Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. (This directly implicated yet two more White House officials in the scandal.) Gregory, though, did not report the information, and he later declined to talk to Fitzgerald about his conversation with Fleischer. Fitzgerald never subpoenaed him. (In a response to an email from a colleague asking about today's disclosure, Gregory emailed, "I can't help you, sorry.") The first day of the trial also brought the news that after the Justice Department opened an investigation of the CIA leak in fall 2003, Cheney pressured the White House press office to make a statement clearing Libby of any wrongdoing....
By then, the "White House press officer" in question was one chubby, Scott McClellan, who apparently was the recipient of a hand written note from Cheney, instructing him to tell the White House press pool that Karl had nothing to do with the leak, despite the fact that Rove was the main source for at least one reporter, Matt Cooper.
The upshot here is that there apparently was a battle between the offices of the president and vice president over who would take the fall over the Plame leak, and the White House decided to throw Cheney's man off the bus, to keep Rove handy for the 2004 election -- besides, Cheney might be able to live without his brain, having had long experience living without a heart -- but Dubya? Shee-it, without his brain, he's downright catatonic.
So what were Libby and Cheney up to in the summer of 2003? More from Mr. Corn:
The case, Fitzgerald acknowledged, has been playing against a large backdrop: the war in Iraq and the controversy regarding the Bush administration's selling of the war. He also conceded that it grew out of the leak scandal and the question of who in the Bush administration had outed Valerie Wilson to reporters after Joseph Wilson publicly accused the White House of having twisted and misrepresented the prewar intelligence. But Fitzgerald attempted to focus the jury on a limited matter: several statements Libby made to the FBI and the grand jury about his role in the leak affair.
In those statements--made during two FBI interviews and two grand jury appearances--Libby said that though he had once possessed official information about Valerie Wilson's CIA employment, he had forgotten all about that, that he then heard about her CIA connection from reporters (mainly, Tim Russert of Meet the Press), and that he subsequently discussed this gossip (not official information) with other reporters. His explanation was essentially this: I forgot to remember what I had once known but had forgotten.
Fitzgerald vowed that he would demonstrate this was a pack of lies. He previewed evidence and testimony cited in the indictment and pretrial submissions that (according to Fitzgerald) shows that Libby in June and early July 2003 was an active gatherer of official (and classified) information on Joseph Wilson and his wife. Fitzgerald pointed to several witnesses who will testify that Libby requested information on the Wilsons from them when they were government officials: Marc Grossman, the No. 3 at the State Department, Robert Grenier, a CIA official, Craig Schmall, a CIA briefer, and Cathie Martin, a spokesperson for Cheney. (Fitzgerald said that Libby called Grenier out of meeting to receive information on the Wilsons from him.) He also noted that Libby, according to Libby's own notes, had learned from Cheney that Valerie Wilson worked at the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA. (This is a unit within the agency's clandestine operations directorate.)
And then Fitzgerald said that he would produce several witnesses to prove that Libby, after obtaining official information on the Wilsons, conveyed some of it to two reporters (Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time) and to the White House press secretary at the time, Ari Fleischer (with the warning the material was "hush-hush").
Libby's story to the FBI and the grand jury was that on July 10, 2003--four days after Joe Wilson (news, bio, voting record) had published an op-ed article noting he had inside information proving the administration had misrepresented the case for war--he had called Russert, that Russert had told him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and that he (Libby) had believed that he was learning about her for the first time. (Libby testified that he was "taken aback" when he heard from Russert that Wilson's wife was a CIA official.) Yet, according to Fitzgerald, Libby had already discussed Valerie Wilson and her CIA affiliation with Fleischer on July 7 and with Miller on July 8. "You cannot learn something startling on Thursday that you were giving out on Monday and Tuesday," Fitzgerald declared. He charged that Libby had concocted the Russert tale to "wipe out" the fact that Libby had earlier been told about Valerie Wilson by Cheney. "This is not a case about bad memory," he maintained. Libby, he said, had been caught in a cover-up.
A diagram of Fitzgerald's case would be a straight line: Libby sought official information, he shared this classified material with reporters, he then made up a story to hide all this from investigators. To get a graphic representation of Well's argument, take a large pot of spaghetti--with plenty of sauce--and hurl it against the wall. Then look at the wall. ...
And what's it all about ... Libby?
...Because the CIA had screwed up the prewar intelligence, Wells suggested, Libby, acting on orders from Cheney and Bush, was trying to combat the popular perception--fueled by Wilson--that the White House had cooked the books on the way to war. After the criminal investigation began, Wells continued, the White House was willing to toss Libby to the wolves because Rove, the mastermind of the GOP, was too valuable to lose.
And so Rove worked like hell to keep from getting indicted, and after five trips to the grand jury, he proffered something that convinced Fitzgerald to back off. No such luck for Louis, who is now experiencing the burn of that ole' meat grinder.
Watch this trial carefully. I think it very well could end with a bang: a shot heard round the capitol as Cheney gets sucked deeper and deeper into the grinder with his former top intel guy, and suddenly, Tricky Dick needs to spend more time with his family.
Then Bushie can woo Southern Methodist with something shiny and new for his now sketchy presidential library -- the first African-American woman vice president.
What do you call a white guy who wants to join the Congressional Black Caucus? Out of luck.
Today's theme, meanwhile: Bush in the toilet. His poll ratings are at Nixon lows, and that's only in this country (here's an even worse result for Dubya)... Wait till you get a load of the international numbers...
So Bush will try to help himself out tonight during the State of the Union. As long as he doesn't try to preempt American Idol, at least he won't go to 15 percent... at least he hopes not... Look for the Democrats to hold back -- way back -- on the applause, and maybe the Republicans, too.
Meanwhile, Bush prepares to deplete our European theater of 8,500 troops.
Leave it to the right to even screw up a smear. Insight Magazine's fairy tale that Barack Obama attended a Muslim "madrassa" school when he was but 6 years old has traversed the planes of right wing hackery, sling-shotting from Glen Beck's wacky world of low-rated cable TV (and high-rated radio), to the ultimate dumping ground for factually-sketchy slander against Democrats: Fox "News" Channel.
Well. That would be all well and good if the story was actually true. Here's the scoop from ThinkProgress:
Last week, Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch outlets amplified a right-wing report alleging that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attended an Islamic “madrassa” school as a 6-year-old child. One Fox News caller questioned whether Obama’s schooling means that “maybe he doesn’t consider terrorists the enemy.” Fox anchor Brian Kilmeade responded, “Well, we’ll see about that.”
So what is a news organization to do when they want to "see about that?" It's called simple reportage. And CNN went one better:
Commenting on this report today, Wolf Blitzer said that CNN had done “what any serious news organization is supposed to do in this kind of a situation”: actually investigate and learn the facts. CNN’s Senior International Correspondent John Vause filed a report from Indonesia.
He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.
"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."
Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.
"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."
Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."
"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."
The Obama aide described Fox News' broadcasting of the Insight story "appallingly irresponsible."
The Insight article even went to lowbrow as to accuse, not their own hackery, but Hillary Clinton's camp of cooking up the Obamarassa story, something Clinton's camp has called total junk (consider the source.) I mean, why take the credit for such a scummy story when you can pass the blame onto someone else?
Oh, and one other thing: if Barack Obama HAD attended a madrassa school at 6 years old, he'd be one hell of a terrorist prodigy, since madrassas are kind of like college -- they're for adults. Funny thing, that.
Shawn Hornbeck's biological father was ... wait for it ... a convicted sex offender. Will this just stop already?
And Michael Devlin finally opens his fetid, deranged mouth, telling the New York Post:
January 21, 2007 -- UNION, Mo. - The hulking pizza manager accused of snatching two boys in Missouri is so ashamed of his arrest, he can't face his own mom and dad. "I don't know how I'm going to explain myself to my parents," said Michael Devlin, who is accused of kidnapping Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby, in an exclusive interview with The Post.
"It's much easier talking to a stranger about these things than your own parents."
Devlin agreed to two 15-minute interviews in a holding area at the Franklin County jail here, during which he talked about his lack of interest in sex, his passion for poker and video games, the amputation of his toes and his solitary confinement in a 10-by-7 foot cell.
But he refused to talk about the criminal charges he's facing, squinting his eyes and fidgeting in his chair when asked about the four years he allegedly held Shawn captive at his apartment in Kirkwood, Mo., and his alleged snatching of Ownby on Jan. 8.
"I will not discuss anything related to the case," he said.
Devlin, who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 300 pounds, came out in an orange prison jumpsuit for both interviews.
He said he has had no visitors other than his lawyers despite having a large family - five siblings and his parents, who adopted him and three of his brothers - nearby.
Life, he said, had been good for him over the last four years, during which he allegedly forced Hornbeck to live with him by threatening to kill the teen and his family if he fled.
"I guess I was relatively happy," he said.
During the first sit-down on Friday, Devlin appeared red-faced and bleary-eyed and seemed downcast.
"I feel nothing," he said. "I hide my emotions from other people. I hide the way I feel."
He declined to answer if he's ever had a girlfriend but said he doesn't care about romantic relationships. "I was never really interested in that," he said. Asked if he was attracted to women, Devlin said, "I can't talk about that because it has to do with the case." ...
Read the rest if you'd like, and there is much more, with Devlin talking about his family life, his love of video games, and the eventuality of his being beaten up or assaulted by other inmates ... by clicking here.
One suggestion in the piece is that Shawn may have pacified Devlin, who is seriously oddball, by playing video games with him:
Video games became a pastime. He said his favorite was "Final Fantasy," an involved role-playing game developed in Japan in the 1980s.
If he weren't in jail, he said, "I'd be in front of my computer screen playing 'Final Fantasy XI,' " he said.
"I like 'Final Fantasy' because it has a network that can connect to people all over the world, from Europe to Japan."
Police say Devlin and Shawn were avid video-game players and may have spent hours playing games together.
China faced a barrage of international condemnation from London to Canberra yesterday after it was revealed that it had launched a missile attack on an ageing weather satellite, a test that threatened to open a "Star Wars" space race.
Formal protests were lodged with the Beijing government, accompanied by expressions of concern from world leaders, including Tony Blair. The Bush administration is privately seething over the event and is believed to be preparing to turn the incident into a major diplomatic spat.
he concern in the US is that the satellite-killing missile test - said by the US national security council to have been carried out on January 11 - demonstrated China has the capability to knock out its military satellite system, which the Pentagon depends on for navigation and surveillance. American military and diplomatic analysts said a Chinese attack on about 40 to 50 satellites in low orbit round the world would leave the country's military blinded within a matter of hours.
But others, more sceptical about US policy, insist China had a right to challenge the US's effective monopoly of space. They noted that Beijing has repeatedly pressed for the US to sign agreements outlawing arms in space, overtures Washington has repeatedly rejected.
Meanwhile, the international community is displaying nerves of steel:
Australia, the US, Canada and Japan have expressed concern at the Chinese test, in which a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile knocked out an ageing Chinese weather satellite about 865km above the earth by slamming into it.
In Canberra, China's ambassador to Australia, Madame Fu Ying, was called in to see Foreign Affairs officials over the January 11 test.
"The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of co-operation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
"We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese."
Right, but again, the U.S. is also the power that has consistently rejected U.N. and Chinese attempts to get a treaty that would have all the leading powers pledging not to weaponize space. Nice move, if your intention is ... wait for it ... to be the first ones to weaponize space. Of course, now, China has beaten us to the punch, it seems.
n 1967, as humanity made great leaps and bounds into outer space, political leaders embraced the notion of the peaceful use of outer space in negotiating the Outer Space Treaty, which affirmed "the common interest of all mankind in the progress of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes" and provided that "The exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind."
However, the treaty did not specifically ban the military use of outer space, other than the placing of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in space. ...
... n January 2001 The Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Managament and Organisation, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, now US Secretary of Defense, recommended that "the US Government should vigorously pursue the capabilities called for in the National Space Policy to ensure that the President will have the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats to and, if necessary, defend against attack on US interests."
Even before the Commission had been established, the US was conducting research and development in anti-satellite weapons, space based earth-strike weapons, and deployment of support systems. In preparation for the deployment of anti-satellite weapons, for example, the US has deployed a Space Surveillance Network which detects, tracks, identifies and catalogs all space objects in case the US finds it "necessary to disrupt, degrade, deny or destroy enemy space capabilities in future conflicts"
The US Space Command's plans for the development of space-based and space directed weapons are laid out in its 1998 Long Range Plan. The integrated system of surveillance, navigation, communication, and attack capabilities are being developed in order to "protect military and commercial national interests and investment in space," and "to deny others the use of space, if required." ...
And now to that rejection:
The United Nations has adopted a number of resolutions calling for negotiations to prevent an arms race in outer space. China has proposed the establishment of an ad hoc committee in the Conference on Disarmament to negotiate a treaty prohibiting the weaponisation of outer space.
Other countries, including Pakistan, have supported the proposal, noting that there are plans for space weaponisation, including elements of Ballistic Missile Defense programs, and that prevention of an arms race in outer space through an agreed treaty would be preferable to trying to pull back such developments after they occurred.
The CD, which functions by consensus, has been unable to move forward on China's proposal because of the opposition of some countries, primarily the US which claims that there is not an arms race in outer space and thus there is no need for such negotiations.
No need, indeed.
By the way, since there is no treaty, thanks to the U.S., China has broken no international laws. Happy weekend!
Sick, misanthropic bastards like Bill O'Reilly and fact-challenged morons like this guy should be slapped for insinuating that the abducted Missouri boy, Shawn Hornbeck, who was held by a wacko named Michael Devlin for for years, either liked his circumstances as an abductee, or ran away from home and stayed with Devlin on purpose. The latest news, that he talked to a police officer about a stolen bike, 10 months into his ordeal, and that he made friends and even went to a school dance, are titilating to a public hungry to know the gory details of his captivity, but as most psychologists will tell you, they are not dispositive.
It seems to me that the most likely scenario is the obvious one: Shawn, who after all was just an 11 year old child when he was taken at gunpoint. was terrified of his captor as he told Oprah, not to mention psychologically brutalized and so he complied with him completely, in order to survive. It seems likely that Devlin not only had a gun, he also had abducted, probably molested and maybe even killed, children before. And then there was the other kind of terror he likely used. This chilling slip by a Missouri Sheriff tells a lot:
"In cases like these, there might be a possibility that there might be other kids involved," Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke told a news conference.
Franklin County is home to Ben Ownby, 13, one of the boys Devlin is accused of kidnapping.
Toelke described Devlin, who will be arraigned today, as a sex offender but then took it back.
"People who commit these crimes don't just wake up one day and decide to be a sex offender," he said.
But in the next breath, the sheriff said he didn't have information that the 300-pound pizzeria manager was a sex offender. ...
But he most likely is, and maybe even a murderous one.
And if that's true, it's also likely that the day that police stumbled on that truck, and discovered Ben Ownby in that apartment, was the luckiest day of Shawn Hornbeck's life. It seems obvious that his captor was drawn to boys around 11 years old, and since Shawn was now a considerably bigger, older teen, he was looking to "replace" him with Ben Ownby. And that can only mean one thing: Shawn Hornbeck probably didn't have long to live. Scroll down to the second headline in this report:
The captor who held Shawn Hornbeck for more than four years kept him from fleeing by threatening to kill the boy and his entire family, investigators said Monday.
That helps explain why Shawn, 15, freed Friday when police tracked a second kidnapped boy to an apartment in Kirkwood, did not seize ample opportunities to run or summon help, according to the investigators....
Officials have determined that Shawn and Ben both were grabbed off the street and prevented from leaving Devlin's vehicle. And while all three were wired into the Internet and involved in computer games, there is no evidence of prior contact between Devlin and either boy, according to investigators.
Investigators have found no evidence that Devlin abducted any other children, sources said. But they are poring over computer equipment and videotapes obtained in a weekend search of his apartment, looking for evidence in Ben and Shawn's cases and any indication of other victims.
Investigators say they are puzzled that Devlin never has been accused of lesser offenses, which tend to be found among people who work their way up the crime ladder to child abduction.
Also on Monday, Washington County Sheriff Kevin Schroeder said Devlin owned a piece of vacant property there, about 20 minutes from where Shawn was kidnapped in the rural community of Richwoods.
Cue the backhoes...
All the speculation about him should end. What this kid needs is support -- emotional, psychological and financial. He's going to need to catch up on four years of school, four years with his family, and create new memories to replace what have to be horrible ones -- and mundane ones -- he was likely forced to adjust to a situation he didn't create, and to his credit, he seems to have done so. That said, his parents will have to keep a close eye on this young man, and pray that he can still become a well adjusted adult, after several years of loving care and some semblance of a normal life.
There are a lot of questions here. Why didn't anyone around "Shawn Devlin" act on what seemed to be suspicions that he at least looked like Shawn Hornbeck? Why didn't his friends tell their parents? If they did, why didn't their parents tell police? This case was apparently huge in that part of Missouri, yet no one seemed to question what was apparent, right in front of them? Even Devilin's boss apparently became suspicious of him eventually, and to his credit, he did talk to a friend on the police force. But the boss was the exception, and that's the real tragedy here; in addition to the prurience of so many people about what these two boys went through, and the insensitivity of a Bill O'Reilly (who should, as Keith Olbermann said, be immediately pushed off the public stage,) there is this paralysis that inflicts all of us -- an unwillingness to get involved, which allows people like Michael Devlin to do the evil things they do.
But even that is 20/20 hindsight. Those folks in Missouri could have been any of us.
Anyway, give to the Shawn Hornbeck foundation here. I'm not sure if there's a fund for Ben Ownby, but there should be, and if I find it, I'll link to it, too.
Meanwhile a WaPo poll has 
